Speaker Test

How to test your speakers

1. Set the Volume slider low, around 25%, and turn it up gradually. The test sounds are pure signals and can be loud at 100%.
2. Choose a Test sound: Tone (440 Hz) is a clear musical A, Pink noise is a hiss that sounds balanced across the whole audible range.
3. Press Left, Both or Right. The sound plays for two seconds in that channel only.
4. For the Frequency sweep, keep the default 20 to 20,000 Hz or type your own From (Hz) and To (Hz), choose a Duration, and press Play sweep. The current Frequency is displayed while it plays.
5. Press Stop at any time to silence everything.

No sound plays until you click a button: browsers only allow audio to start after a user action.

Checking left and right channels

With headphones, Left must come from the left ear cup only and Right from the right one. With speakers, sit in front of them and check that each sound comes from the correct side. If the sides are swapped, the cables or the headphones are reversed. If Left and Right both play from the two sides, your system is probably set to mono audio (an accessibility option on Windows, macOS, Android and iOS), or the device only has one speaker, as with most phones held vertically and many small Bluetooth speakers.

Both plays the same signal in the two channels, so it should sound centred, as if it comes from between the speakers. If it leans to one side, check the balance setting in your system sound settings.

Pink noise is often better than a tone for this test: its energy is spread over every frequency, so it is easy to locate and it reveals a speaker that sounds duller or quieter than the other.

The frequency sweep

The sweep is a sine wave that glides from the start frequency to the end frequency. It is exponential: every octave (a doubling of frequency) takes the same time, which matches how we hear pitch. A 10-second sweep from 20 Hz to 20 kHz spends about one second per octave.

Listen for:

• Where the bass starts. Laptop and phone speakers usually produce little below 150–200 Hz. Good headphones and speakers with a woofer can go down to 40 Hz or lower.
• Rattles and buzzing. A crackle at a specific frequency points to a loose part, a damaged driver or a vibrating object nearby.
• Where the treble ends. Young ears hear up to about 17–20 kHz; the limit drops with age and many adults stop hearing the sweep between 12 and 16 kHz. That’s normal and doesn’t necessarily mean the speaker has stopped.

Keep the volume moderate: very high frequencies can be loud even when you barely perceive them, and low frequencies at high volume can damage small speakers.